I believe the pay range thing stated for many jobs is mostly nonsense. Almost any job that says something like 8000 to 12,000 is guaranteed to pay 8000 or close to it unless it pays per hour. Sometimes you see ridiculous ranges like 6000 to 16,000 too. I guess they get some replies from people with $ in their eyes thinking they'll earn closer to the bigger amount?

I believe the pay range thing stated for many jobs is mostly nonsense. Almost any job that says something like 8000 to 12,000 is guaranteed to pay 8000 or close to it unless it pays per hour. Sometimes you see ridiculous ranges like 6000 to 16,000 too. I guess they get some replies from people with $ in their eyes thinking they'll earn closer to the bigger amount?

The pay range is to check to see if there are any suckers that will accept the low end of the range. Sometimes there are.

For my current job, I stated my required salary 20% higher than the upper bound of their salary range. Oh, and they gave me what I asked for.

Here's my evaluation of pay, prior to Spring Festival I was only really working at the university, earning 5000 a month for 3 hours, decided I should do more. Baring in mind I have plans to open a cup cake shop and increase my office space and get a bigger apartment, I wanted to work upto 30 hours a week[including the 3 hours from uni]:

All the below is HYPOTHETICAL, I would never ever work outside my legally allowed place.

I applied to almost everything on echinacities, I find it better to do it then sift through the rubbish to get something good.

Firstly, I found a middle school, provided accomodation, half an airfare[5000] for a 4 month contract. At this point I had many offers, so could afford to play. Before discussing the salary I did a demo which they loved, sat down and they said 4000 for 8 hours a week, I said no, I wanted 5, anyways, I also 'convinced' them to push all the hours into a single day.

Also, I had a flood of kindergarden offers, here's the news from the recruiters, because of the difficulty of attaining Z visas for 'non natives' so to speak, many of these teachers who foreign monkeyed it up went home, and there's a huge demand now, especially from 'international kindergartens.'

This experience has basically taught me: If you do a GOOD job, a good demo, give the right idea[the middle school HR met me for a coffee for a chat and I told her my philosophy for teaching], then you can haggle. Don't settle for a lowish sum, especially since I teach those planning to study abroad.

With the kindergartens I didn't REALLY fancy doing it because it's exhausting, BUT I negotiated up to 220. You have to have the balls to walk away and find something else. If the kindy said 100 I'd have got up and left. They told me 200 was their last offer, I came down from 250 and left them for 2 days [assuming they were looking to find someone else] then they came back with 220. Fairly happy with that, $35 an hour tax free is great!